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be comparatively easy, but if we attempt to force the negro on the South as a votter, "a loyal citizen," we begin a new revolution in which the Northwest may take a different side from what we did when we were fighting to vindicate our Constitution. I am more than usually sensitive on this point because I have realized in our country that one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out. I am tired of fighting, and if the "theorists" of New England impose this new condition on us I dread the result. The country is now deeply in debt, the South is exhaushed and can contribute little or northing toward its payment no matter how severe the laws of taxation be made, and the sale of her lands and plantations will not realize one tenth part of the money required to pay the troops that will be needed to enforce the sales and maintain possession to the purchasers. I know the people of the South even better than you do, and you at least cannot doubt the sincerity of my opinion. I do believe the people of the South realize the fact that their former slaves are free, and if allowed reasonable time, and are not harassed by "confiscation" and political complication, will very soon adapt their condition and interest to their new state of facts. Manyll or lease on easy terms part of their land to their former slaves and gradually the same political state of things will result as now exists in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. The West will not submit to the taxation necessary to maintain separate colonies of negroes, or the armies needed to enforce the rights of negroes dwelling in the Southern States in a condition antagonistic to the feelings and prejudices of the people, the result of which will be internal war, and the final extermination of the white or black majority. But I confess I am not familiar with the laws of Congress which originated your bereau, and repeat my entire confidence in your pure and exalted character. As to Mr. Stanton I expect nothing. My orders announcing to the troops the terms of our convention (first, at Durham's Station) was addressed to the troops and not to the world. Mr. Stanton's official bulletin published to the world conveyed false information, for it contained matter that he knew I did not possess, and he thereby stimulated a public attack on my motives. But what reason did my "order" give for his scrutiny and indorsing Halleck's order to violate my truce, attack an enemy in the act of surrendering, when he knew General Grant was present (April 27), and orders to my juniors to disobey my orders. I don't yet understand his motives and don't care. I did succeed in doing, spite of him, all the good my office demanded within the limits of Johnston's command, and could as easily have extended them over the whole South. Stanton's eight reasons against my terms are all bad and he knows it. His assertion that he could have made as good terms any time in the past four years is simply untrue, and you know it, and as a lawyer he knows that my terms did not make us liable for the rebel debt, or in any manner recognize the Southern Confederacy any more than the Dix-Hill cartel, or any of the many "terms" hitherto made between army commanders. But I will not bother you with such matters. Stanton's and Halleck's conduct to me was an insult, and I shall resent it as such, when I choose. We will all be near Alexandria on Friday, and I know you will call to see us. Don't let the foul airs of Washington poison your thoughts toward your old comrades in arms.